Islamabad: To help combat rising temperatures and an increasing number of heat waves in the country, the new incoming government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) will plant 10 billion trees across the country over the course of five years in order to restore the country’s depleted forests and to fight climate change.
According to NBC News, former cricketer and recently elected Prime Minister Imran Khan will be tackling the issue of restoring Pakistan’s depleted forests on the heels of his victory last month in the country’s election.
In 2014, the PTI-led KPK government launched a Billion Tree Tsunami project. The a afforestation project included 732 million new saplings, 27 million self-growing saplings that were taken into preservation, 240 million saplings after procurement and 153 million saplings distributed among the public. Khan lauded his provincial government’s tree-planting project, which he said had met its targets – 40 percent from planting trees, and the remainder from assisting the natural regeneration of existing forests in the province.
Though, Global warming in the country was not reportedly a major issue of any political party including PTI, in the recently held election campaign as the country grapples with terror attacks, the impacts of climate change, including rising temperatures and major flooding, have reportedly cost the country $6 billion to $14 billion in economic recovery and relief.
Khan’s PTI party said in its manifesto that “It is now imperative to tackle climate change and reverse environmental degradation, as Pakistan’s situation will only worsen as the economy grows.”
According to recent German Watch report, Pakistan is the world’s seventh most vulnerable country to climate change despite being among the world’s least polluting countries, with a global emission contribution of 0.2 percent.
“We have been consumed for so long by so many other challenges such as the war on terror that has engulfed our cities, suicide bombings, public health, that kind of thing,” says Ali Touqeer Sheikh, founder and CEO of environmental think tank LEAD Pakistan.
“But it is extremely important also that we ensure we have enough fresh water and that our development does not destroy our own coastline. We have one of the largest deltas in the world, but it is dying because of climate change,” he added.
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